


FLARP Begets Fashion

by fleece



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Dresses, Gen, Pre-Sgrub (Homestuck), Sewing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-28
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:14:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23886535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fleece/pseuds/fleece
Summary: Kanaya makes a dress.
Comments: 11
Kudos: 15





	FLARP Begets Fashion

**Author's Note:**

> I tagged for "Canon-typical violence" but it's more "canon-typical awfulness" in reference to the supplies Kanaya uses to sew.

Good night everyone! In this video I’m going to show you how to surpass all your fellow FLARPers with historically accurate combat lolita, since moons know none of you can surpass anyone in actual campaign stats. I’ll break down all the pieces and steps for you, and if you can’t do it, either die or try again! I’m rooting for you!  
\- GrubTube user imperiousSeamstress

Perhaps it is just childish whim, but you don’t like your clothes. The only colors they issue you are black, skin-grey, and blood-color jade. They are shirts and pants. They are plain. They are boring. You, in your estimation, are not boring. While there is beauty in a unpatterned orchid, you prefer the ones with jagged spots and gradients.

You adorn your hair and hive with flowers. You make cutoff shorts and tank tops. You think there’s more out there.

The planetary internet is vast and varied, but even in its seemingly most obscure corners you don’t find much information for your intended hobby. Sewing wounds, su(tu)re! Sewing anything else, not so much. Luckily you’ve made some friends that can point you in the right direction.

AA: yeah the algorithms for gruuble can be tricky to navigate!  
AA: or so sollux tells me anyway  
GA: I Imagine He Can Get Very Frustrated  
GA: Indeed My Own Frustration Is Growing Quickly  
AA: sollux’s frustration has probably molted before yours then  
AA: it’s as big as it can get!  
GA: Yes I Can See That  
GA: Because It Is So Tall?  
AA: haha good one!  
AA: anyway you know about FLARP right?  
GA: You Have Mentioned It I Think  
GA: It Sounds Very Dangerous  
AA: oh yes but that’s part of the fun!  
AA: another part of the fun is that many people like to dress up  
AA: to enhance the roleplay aspect  
AA: you might have some luck looking on FLARP forums  
AA: for costume tutorials!  
GA: Thank You That Sounds Very Helpful  
GA: Do You Have Any Recommendations?  
AA: hmm sorry i don’t think i do  
AA: i mostly look at clouding logs and tips  
AA: tavros might have a better idea!

AT: oH, yES, i CAN HELP,  
AT: oR i THINK i CAN, mAYBE, aPPROXIMATE HELPING,  
AT: bECAUSE i’M, uM, nOT SURE HOW MUCH UTILITY, aNYTHING i SAY WOULD REALLY HAVE,  
GA: Tavros It Would Definitely Help me  
AT: tHANKS,  
AT: uM, oNE OF THE SITES, i LIKE,  
At: hAS A COSTUMING, sUBFORUM,  
AT: tHOUGH MOST OF THE THREADS,  
AT: aRE PEOPLE, tALKING ABOUT HOW COSTUMES, aRE STUPID,  
AT: sO IT CAN BE, uM, hARD TO FIND ANYTHING, oF ACTUAL RELEVANCE,

Tavros is right; it’s hard to find the useful threads.

Eventually, in a “Show off your costumes!” thread that is 15% costumes and 85% insults, invective, and intimations of incineration, you find a link to a defunct blog with a series of videos on how to sew FLARP-approrpiate historical garments. It’s probably a highblood’s. Besides the quality of all their materials, the domain is still active even though it looks like the person’s fleetside by now. They are unusually open and encouraging for a Grubtube creator. They also take some care to try to be anonymous, communicating only through subtitles, and never show anything but their hands, besides a few times their foot appeared to demonstrate the pedal for their sewing machine. Still, even an unsuccessful attempt at hemononymity is strange from a highblood. Well, about as strange as being into clothing is for a troll.

You spend whole days watching imperiousSeamstress’s content. But you can’t just watch how to do something and never do it.

Troll Excel would probably help with budgeting for materials, though you’ve asked for Sollux for too much computer help already. You anxiously click through materials sites and make notes, fretting at both prices and links (TA: they can all have viiru2es, KN! ii’m seriious. all of them. ye2, even that one. don’t a2k how ii know what your cur2or ii2 on).

Access to many items is restricted by blood color, and many of those that aren’t caste-locked are usually too much for your stipend. You purchase butcher’s paper because craft paper is expensive even though it needs less moisture treatment. Though it pains you, knowing what will happen to your mom in a few sweeps, you also buy several rolls of lowblood-lusus shroud cloth for the both the good value and color variation. (You suppose there is a joke to be made about how pigment value relates to color, there). You have some suturing needles in your quick-cull kits, so all you need is more thread. That’s easy; low-grade fishing line is soft and malleable enough for your purposes.

You can’t find the sphere-topped needles used in the videos to attach different pieces of clothes together—pins, they’re called. You think suppliers might assume only a highblood would have such a frivolous interest. The heads are are purple, actually, so that may be imperiousSeamstress’s blood color. You end up ordering some acullingpuncture needles but find the actual needle part is too short for your purposes, to prevent the depth of piercing that would cause too quick a death. You don’t really understand mediculling. Most of it is indistinguishable from torture.

After many more searches, you order entomological needles instead. Your mom thinks this is very funny and says, “I’m not the only insect in this hivehold, pupa.”

Each delivery of supplies makes you more and more excited. You catalog and organize all of it. Now you just have to come up with something to make.

The FLARP costume threads actually give you a lot of ideas. Ideas that are fantastically more well conceived than anything any of these people could come up with! You don’t like thinking you run off of spite, but you are a troll, in the end. Few trolls can resist superiority. Despite the fantastical nature of all the outfits, they’re still all so basic. This waistline too loose and this one too tight, these colors poorly matched, those proportions weak. A pen or two dies for your sketches.

“They’ve done it and you haven’t, pupa,” your mom reminds you, after you spend a whole evening chattering to her about your plans. “Remember the first seeds of your garden? You were so enthusiastic when you saw the cotyledons. Then you ended up overwatering all of them to death! You were such a darling grub.”

“Mom!” you object. Your face is green.

“You’re still a darling,” she says, reassuring.

“That’s not what I was embarrassed about, Mom,” you say, running a hand over her side.

“I’m sorry, pupa,” she says. “I only mean to say that it’s okay to start small.”

Your lusus is wise and you have great affection for her.

Keeping in mind her advice, you decide you will attempt a simple dress. You can always add on to it if it turns out well.

You cannibalize a few shirts to figure out the component pieces and how they’re stitched together. Thinking of early schoolfeeding modules, you even lay down and trace the outline of your body on a long sheet of paper. After you rewatch one of imperiousSeamstress’s videos you realize you can just use a string to measure yourself, then draw the measure lines on the paper.

It’s been a while since you’ve become skilled in plant cultivation. You forgot that learning a new skill is being constantly humbled.

Layering the sheets over each other, you extend the outline of your shirts to be about knee-length, then draw lines radiating outward from the sides for a wider skirt. Because you can’t find your scissors you end up using your hand pruners to cut out your pattern.

You check the videos again to see how best to arrange the paper on the fabric. You don’t really understand what they mean when they talk about the grain. They also talk some about using a cheaper cloth for practice. Considering your cloth was pretty cheap and that this is your first try, you think it’s safe to ignore them on both fronts. Your makeshift pins work well to attach the pattern and cloth.

There’s some delay before you work up the nerve to cut the fabric. You don’t know why you’re anxious. Permanence never bothered you with trimming your plants; mistakes usually grow back. Once you actually pick up your pruners, though, the familiar weight in your hand makes it easy to shear through the cloth. You cut two copies of the pattern for the front and back, and a small strip to finish the neck. Putting all the pins in is satisfying.

The sewing is equal parts delightful and tedious. You can see the garment coming together, centimeter by centimeter, but it takes a long time. Your stipend isn’t large enough for the machine the highblood used, which the few reviews online all agree is the most reliable. You’ll have to save for a few seasons. Looking at it positively, you may have the experience by then to make garments that will really need the machine!

To make the process more bearable, you take your work and sit under blooming trees in your garden, looking up now and then to watch petals flutter and fall. Your initial fumbling becomes slightly less clumsy as you keep working. You think, dressmaking is perhaps just another form of cultivation, ultimately. The time scale is different, but both take patience. The push and pull of your needle is so that the thread’s movement is like the twining of a vine.

Sewing the neckband is the most difficult part. You have to recut the strip you use to make it several times because the width just looks off, and pinning it to the neck hole of the dress takes some precision. There’s less space to really maneuver the needle, too. Hemming the bottom of the skirt and the ends of the sleeves is a relief.

When you finish the final stitches you are so excited that you pull on the garment before taking all the pins out. They clatter on the floor as you run to your mirror. You’re in a dress! The skirt of it swirls from your sudden stop. You do a small dance, stepping from side to side, and watch it flow around your knees. You can’t stop smiling.

Even though the top is all bunched from your shirt still on underneath it, you can tell it’s crooked and your stitching messy. The hemming on the bottom is uneven. The neck is too tight. You can see all your mistakes—and it doesn’t matter. Well, they do matter; you’ll be able to improve upon them next time. The thrill of making something new hums through you.

You hop a little bit from foot to foot again, energized, before taking the dress off again. Though no one can see you, you look around before you hug the dress to your chest, spin till you’re dizzy and fall, laughing, to the floor.

**Author's Note:**

> A Ladystuck2020 pinch hit fic for vriska-posting on tumblr and their prompt "Kanaya making her first dress"! Hope you enjoy!


End file.
